Join us in celebrating the Revolutionary Women of New York

Join us in celebrating the Revolutionary Women of New York

On Thursday, December 5, 2019, the Schuyler Center will host a fundraiser celebrating Revolutionary Women of New York, including our founder, Louisa Lee Schuyler, and her great-grandmother, Eliza Schuyler Hamilton. The event will be held at the Albany Institute of History and Art, in collaboration with the Albany Institute of History and Art’s Schuyler Sisters exhibit. We will honor our organization’s founder, Louisa Lee Schuyler and her dogged determination in the 1800s to advance policies to improve conditions for low-income and mentally ill New Yorkers, including a Children’s Law, revolutionizing the way poor children were treated. Prior to that, Louisa Lee Schuyler founded the Women’s Central Association of Relief during the Civil War; this became the United States Sanitary Commission, a predecessor of International Red Cross. We honor too, Louisa Lee Schuyler’s revolutionary great-grandmother, Eliza Schuyler Hamilton (wife of Alexander) and her lifelong care and assistance for refugees and orphans. In celebrating our founding mother and great-grandmother, we’ll reflect on the many strong, smart, and determined women who have shaped public policy in New York State.

Date: Thursday, December 5, 2019
Time: 5:00-7:00 pm
Location: Albany Institute of History and Art
What it is: Cocktail reception and exhibit celebrating New York’s Revolutionary Women – the Schuyler Sisters and Louisa Lee Schuyler

Stay tuned for pricing and registration information![/vc_column_text]

A Day in Hamil-Tunes History!

A Day in Hamil-Tunes History!

On September 21, 2019, the Schuyler Center joined the Albany Institute of History and Art for their Family Expedition Day and Hamil-Tunes Karaoke.

While museum-goers of all ages learned about the world of Alexander Hamilton and the Schuyler Sisters, our own President and CEO, Kate Breslin, spoke with passers-by about our link to Hamilton, our connection with the Schuyler family, and how their legacy of civic-mindedness manifested in the work of the Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy. Many people were excited to discover us, and picked up copies of our literature, our State of New York’s Children Data Book, as well as some yummy chocolates.

When it came time for Hamil-Tunes Karaoke, Schuyler Center Director of Development Chris Thompson knew how to get the crowd going! His emcee skills ensured everyone was clapping and on their feet. Fifteen songs weren’t enough for this group of Hamilton fans—after one round of singing-a-long, a short intermission was followed by even more musical fun.

The Schuyler Center team cheered everyone on, and some even got up to sing. Before the event was over, Chris, Director of Policy Dede Hill, and Communications Associate Amy Weismann couldn’t resist dressing up in a bit of period-themed costume for a quick picture. Many thanks to the Albany Institute of History and Art for including us in this event!

Photo Album

Schuyler Center’s connection with Hamilton

Schuyler Center’s connection with Hamilton

A cynic could think that Schuyler Center’s “Hamilton fever” is opportunistic. They wouldn’t be entirely wrong. Many of us on the staff are head-over heels Hamilton fans, harboring dreams of receiving a personal invitation (and tickets) from composer/playwright/actor Lin Manuel Miranda himself.

In fact, Schuyler Center’s connection with Alexander and Eliza Hamilton is real, as is our pride in that connection. It is not a stretch to say that the Schuyler Center is carrying on some of the finest aspects of our foreparents’ legacy – particularly that of Eliza.

Let’s jump to the end of the show when Eliza sings with quiet pride about what she considers to be her greatest legacy: “the orphanage, the orphanage.” Eliza Schuyler Hamilton, widowed abruptly at the age of 47 when Alexander Hamilton was killed by Aaron Burr in a duel, would live for another fifty years, reaching the age of 97. When Alexander died, Eliza was left impoverished, and with several of their seven surviving children still young. And yet, she did not withdraw from her engagement with the world. Instead, she became a leader in her own right – devoting much of her time and resources to charitable work to aid orphans and individuals experiencing homelessness. Among her proudest achievements – at least according to the musical – was founding New York’s first orphanage.

Schuyler Center’s founder, Louisa Lee Schuyler, seems to have been cut from the same cloth as her great-grandmother Eliza. She was fully engaged in the world, and her life’s work was to improve the health and well-being of individuals living in poverty. What gives us even greater pride: Louisa leveraged her talent, wealth and privilege not to simply help individual families endure poverty or illness, but to reform and build systems to reduce and prevent poverty and ill health. She did that by forming “citizen brigades” – groups of New Yorkers who toured the state’s almshouses and then went to Albany and other seats of power, told the story of the horrid conditions they observed, and demanded reforms. As SCAA Executive Director, Homer Folks remarked after Louisa died “She didn’t build a Schuyler Home for Children; she preferred to influence and develop community and State.”

Today, when we are in the Capitol grossly outnumbered by hundreds of lobbyists representing impossibly well-resourced corporate clients, we sometimes despair of how we will get New York leaders to prioritize the needs of politically powerless children and low-income families. At these moments, we draw strength from our legacy – of Louisa and her “citizen brigades” telling the story of the alms-houses with unflagging persistence and determination, not stopping until they achieved real change.

*photo credit goes to Proctors[/vc_column_text]

Louisa Lee Schuyler and Her Legacy

Louisa Lee Schuyler and Her Legacy

This post was written by Schuyler Center’s 2019 summer intern, Kathryn Delehanty, after a deep dive into the New York State Archives.

Louisa Lee Schuyler, founder of the Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy, (SCAA), was born to Eliza Hamilton Schuyler and George Lee Schuyler in 1837. The Schuylers were a prominent family–Eliza Hamilton Schuyler, a great grandchild, and George Lee Schuyler, a grandchild of Philip Schuyler, the decorated Revolutionary War Veteran. Louisa’s life was dedicated to public service, and she left a legacy that speaks volumes about the way she lived her life. As stated by SCAA’s first Executive Director, Homer Folks, “Perhaps Miss Schuyler’s greatest characteristic was that of complete readiness to undertake the thing that needed to be done when convinced that that was what needed to be done, wholly irrespective of the difficulties that seemed to be in the way.”

The Civil War shaped Louisa Lee’s life; she was 25 when it began. However, Louisa Lee attributed something earlier in her life to her initial passion about reforming state systems for people living in poverty. In her 1915 speech, “Forty-Three Years Ago,” Louisa Lee tells the story of the first time she understood how lacking hospitals were for the sick and needy. One Christmas, at her grandparents’ house in the Hudson River Valley (nicknamed Nevis for the island Alexander Hamilton was from), a doctor from a New York City hospital made a house call after Louisa Lee’s grandmother fell and broke her arm. That night, by the light of the fire, this doctor mesmerized the children with stories from the hospital, which captured Louisa Lee’s imagination. He mentioned his long term patients’ loneliness and their yearning for outside human contact, which stuck with Louisa Lee through her younger years, becoming her focus and passion in the years after the war.

At the breakout of the Civil War, Louisa Lee became the chair of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, which boasted 25,000 package deliveries with only one lost. The stress of the war effort combined with the devastation the war left behind forced Louisa Lee to retreat to Europe to restore her health. During this time she was able to process the devastation of the war, as well as the future of hospitals. In the fall of 1871, Louisa Lee visited the Westchester County poorhouse, which inspired her to form SCAA to improve the wellbeing of people in poverty in State institutions. In 1872, in the parlor of her father’s house, Louisa Lee and her like-minded friends founded the State Charities Aid Association. SCAA helped create the first nursing school in the country at Bellevue, the hospital for the poor in New York City. In 1875, three years after its founding, SCAA advanced a bill called the Children’s Law, which removed children from almshouses with adults, revolutionizing the way poor children were treated. After the victorious beginning years of advocating for poor children, SCAA worked on aiding mentally ill poor people, and eventually helping to end preventable blindness in children. The work continued into the 20th century with an adoption placing agency, and now, with an organization lobbying for people who can’t afford lobbyists.

Louisa Lee Schuyler was a woman determined to make the world around her a better place, and by creating SCAA, she managed to ensure the longevity of her activism. With the recent interest in the Schuyler family from Hamilton the musical we are rediscovering our own Schuyler legacy. Louisa Lee, similarly passionate about advocacy for the neediest among us, was alive at the same time as her great-grandmother for 17 years. Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton’s founding of the first private orphanage in New York City certainly had a profound impact on Louisa Lee in her early years. Following her grandmother’s death, Louisa Lee was thrown into the brutality of the American Civil War and then lived her life in pursuit of economic equality for all. On the 100th anniversary of Louisa Lee’s death, Homer Folks said, “Clearly we do not have to fight again the battles of which Miss Schuyler won, but there are other phases of public health and public welfare which still need Miss Schuyler’s type of consideration and action.” The battles Louisa Lee fought are long won, but to this day, 147 years after we were founded, we fight for the rights of New Yorkers with Louisa Lee’s passion and tenacity.[/vc_column_text]